Tue-Sun11-11; We are closed Mondays, except for fig-2 openings which will take place in the ICA studio every Monday from 6-8pm throughout 2015. Please access the Studio via the ramp entrance from Carlton House Terrace.

DESCRIPTION

Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper)explores how artists since the 1940s to the present day have used drawing to address ideas critical and current to their time, ranging from the politics of gender and sexuality to feminist issues, war, censorship and race. Stretching from fashion to erotica, the works can all be viewed as being in some way transgressive, employing traditional and commercial drawing techniques to challenge specific social, political or stylistic conventions.

Curated by Sarah McCrory, the exhibition draws on the way artists turned to the commercial realms of comics, fashion and illustration to revitalise drawing within the visual arts - many of the works in Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) were originally produced for a commercial context. One common aspect of these varied practices is a high level of technical skill - these are artists who often confounded critics of their subject matter unable to condemn their technique. Choosing to step outside the boundaries of social acceptability, the works in Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) comprise modest proposals and trenchant political gestures.